1962 Topps #85 Gil Hodges
About Gil Hodges
Number 85, a first-series card, already lists him with the New York Mets, but the year it follows, 1961, was his last in a Dodgers uniform: .242 on 52 hits, 8 home runs and 31 runs batted in across 109 games, fewer than half of them starts. Once that season ended, the brand-new Mets took the 37-year-old in the National League expansion draft and brought him back to the city his family had never left.
Gil Hodges played 18 major league seasons -- one game in 1943, then 1947 through 1963 -- and spent nearly all of them at first base for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, in a lineup with Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella and Duke Snider. Born in Princeton, Indiana, the son of a coal miner, he left the Dodgers 11 days after his debut to join the Marines, serving as an anti-aircraft gunner at Tinian and Okinawa and earning a Bronze Star with a combat V. He returned as the outstanding first baseman of the 1950s: eight All-Star selections, 370 home runs, 1,274 runs batted in, a .273 average, four home runs in a single game against the Braves on August 31, 1950, and the first three Gold Gloves ever awarded at his position. He anchored six Dodgers pennant winners, drove in both runs in the seventh game that finally gave Brooklyn a World Series in 1955, and batted .391 when Los Angeles won the 1959 Series. Managing followed: five rebuilding years with the expansion Washington Senators, then the Mets, whom he took to 100 wins and the 1969 championship. He died of a heart attack on April 2, 1972, two days short of his 48th birthday, and entered the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · National Baseball Hall of Fame
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 791 | 0 | 11 | 174 | 228 | 170 | 109 | 98 | 1 |
| SGC | 177 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 52 | 46 | 39 | 31 | 1 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Snapshot 2026-09-24. Half-grades fold down (8.5→8), and PSA's qualified grades are counted separately from the straight-grade rows shown here. Slabs of the three cards printed #139 are joined by description, never by number alone. PSA registers the green tints as a separate set; a tint's population is listed under that state of the card it belongs to.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #85 card?
It is card #85 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Gil Hodges of the New York Mets.
How many cards are in the 1962 Topps Baseball set?
600 cards, tracked as 708 collectible states. The numbers run from 1 to 598 with no gaps, but three different cards were printed #139 - two Hal Reniff poses, catalogued 139a and 139b, and the Babe Hits 60 Babe Ruth Special, 139c - so 598 numbers make 600 cards; 93 cards carry catalogued print variations, the series-2 green tints among them, that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Baseball Almanac, Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, BaseballCardPedia, The Topps Archives, Baseball-Reference, the SABR BioProject and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, PSA & SGC population reports. Card data compiled and maintained by T206Cards.com. Page last updated 2026-10-03.